Nope. A progressive tax system is necessary for a just society. Think of societal wealth as being a big pie we all contribute to. Everybody is entitled to a little piece of pie. The bigger the piece of pie you take out...the more you have to do to justify that.
Money is just something we used as a means to entitle a person to take part of the pie. A dollar for someone making $30,000, $50,000, or even $100,000 has more value to that person in getting essential things than that dollar does for someone making ten million. The dollar may be equal but the importance of that dollar is not equal. That is why incomes should be taxed more heavily as incomes go up.
There is also the fundamental idea that we're not playing a Monopoly game where a person's contribution to society is completely unrelated to their income. In general, value is based on what a person does. How much does a person work? How valuable--with the exception of something like a major invention--is the maximum contribution to society based on their work on a hourly basis? If you work 2,000 hours would it be $2,000 an hour or $5,000 an hour? I think at some point we should be taxing people at a high rate because there is just too much of a windfall for what they are doing, while other people are working extremely hard for peanuts. I think marginal tax rates should start to rise significantly after you hit a million in a year and after ten million should be very high. 39.5 percent marginal rate on a person's income after they make a billion? Come on. What kind of an idiot would organize a society on that basis. It's ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is hedge fund managers making a billion and paying what 20% due to carried interest because their income is counted as capital gains. That is so ridiculous and cannot be changed, just showing how (legally) corrupt our government is right now.
Money is just something we used as a means to entitle a person to take part of the pie. A dollar for someone making $30,000, $50,000, or even $100,000 has more value to that person in getting essential things than that dollar does for someone making ten million. The dollar may be equal but the importance of that dollar is not equal. That is why incomes should be taxed more heavily as incomes go up.
There is also the fundamental idea that we're not playing a Monopoly game where a person's contribution to society is completely unrelated to their income. In general, value is based on what a person does. How much does a person work? How valuable--with the exception of something like a major invention--is the maximum contribution to society based on their work on a hourly basis? If you work 2,000 hours would it be $2,000 an hour or $5,000 an hour? I think at some point we should be taxing people at a high rate because there is just too much of a windfall for what they are doing, while other people are working extremely hard for peanuts. I think marginal tax rates should start to rise significantly after you hit a million in a year and after ten million should be very high. 39.5 percent marginal rate on a person's income after they make a billion? Come on. What kind of an idiot would organize a society on that basis. It's ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is hedge fund managers making a billion and paying what 20% due to carried interest because their income is counted as capital gains. That is so ridiculous and cannot be changed, just showing how (legally) corrupt our government is right now.